The Spare Bedroom: A totally heartwarming, funny and feel good romantic comedy

by Elizabeth Neep

  Alice looked at me, her earnest expression sporadically illuminated by the spotlights. She nodded. ‘They’re the forgiving type.’ Alice put her hand to my chin lightly and turned it away from Sam and Jamie and towards the stage. ‘But for now, don’t torture yourself. You’ve done that enough.’

  For a second I wanted to turn my head back round, to stare at the one thing I couldn’t have. To stare all my mistakes in the face and just hold on. But I kept on looking forward. I would keep on looking forward. Focused on the stage, my eyes fell to the right-hand side, where I could see a line of people sitting down and facing an array of half-coloured canvases. They were painting. A few seats remained empty, a handful of canvases unspoilt. Alice must have followed my gaze as, unprompted, she said, ‘They’re for anyone to use, just another response to the music.’

  I began to move out of the row and down the aisle towards the front of the crowd. Shaking, I filled the empty seat and looked at the canvas before me. Why was I here? I hadn’t painted in years. I reached out to grasp a paintbrush by the side of the canvas, rolling the wood through my fingers. It felt foreign and familiar all at the same time. Looking down at the palette of primary colours laid out before me, I savoured the strength of their hues. Not knowing if I even remembered how to do it, I began to dab red and yellow together, bright orange emerging before my eyes. Covering the tip of the brush, I looked towards the white blank page before me. I began to draw long fluid lines of colour across the canvas, light and neat in a way my life would never be. I painted over the thought. And then again, and again. Each ounce of self-loathing and regret, brushed over. Each lie coloured with something like truth. Tears began to fall down my already messy face. I loved this. I love this. The thought reverberated around my mind. I love that I can do this. Thoughts of Sam. Thoughts of CreateSpace. I painted over them. As the song drew to an end, I sat back to look at what I had made. I didn’t know what it was, but that didn’t matter; I knew what it felt like. Against a backdrop of brokenness, I had remembered a little thing I loved that wasn’t who I dated, wasn’t what I did, wasn’t who I knew. And it felt a bit like hope.

  Chapter 36

  13 September 2020 – Sydney, Australia

  ‘Jess, it was honestly so amazing,’ Alice said, sipping her deep glass of red. Sunday afternoons had never tasted so good. ‘Why did you ever stop painting?’ I looked down into my own glass. Like yesterday, coffee had been the gateway drug to something stronger; thankfully The Coffee Shop provided both. I looked around at the canvas-covered walls and back to Alice, feeling more at home than I had done in months.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I replied. ‘Uni happened.’ I shrugged. ‘Sam happened.’ I took a sip, searching my mind for the story I’d always told myself, the one where being a painter was a cute hobby, a little bit alt. ‘He helped me think about the ways I could make a career out of art. Art therapy, art journalism…’

  ‘Artist?’ Alice interjected, smiling as she shook her glossy hair behind her.

  ‘You have to be really good to make it.’ I shook my own head.

  ‘You are really good, Jess.’ She looked from the paintings hung around the bar back to me.

  ‘Few people make a career out of it,’ I argued in return.

  Somehow, I had begun to sound like the pragmatic one.

  ‘Yes, few people do.’ Alice raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow and took another telling sip. I couldn’t be the few. ‘You could do something great if you had a little faith in yourself, you know?’

  I looked around the artisan wine bar, taking in the beachscapes on the walls. They reminded me of the one in Alice’s apartment, each of them too flat and emotionless, failing to capture the textures I had seen in the view from Coogee Beach.

  ‘I couldn’t even make it in journalism.’

  ‘Where’s it?’ Alice said, a trick question dressed up in sincerity.

  ‘Huh?’ I asked. ‘CreateSpace? Woolloomooloo?’

  ‘No,’ Alice went on. ‘It, like what does “making it” look like for you?’

  I sighed; how to even begin to explain? ‘Well, a bit like you, maybe?’ I said. ‘Like, girl-bossing it, at the top of your game?’ I didn’t mean it to sound like a question but everything I’d learnt about Alice since becoming closer to her had made me see that it hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t all just been handed to her on her pretty-girl plate.

  ‘I don’t feel like I’ve made it,’ Alice scoffed into her wine. ‘I’m not sure anyone does.’

  ‘Well, you have.’ I wouldn’t let her argue; I was doing enough of that for both of us. ‘I know you’ve worked hard for it. I just can’t see what my career will look like, I can’t—’

  ‘Stop telling yourself you can’t do it,’ Alice interrupted, with force. ‘If you’re passionate about journalism, try harder.’

  I wasn’t, I never had been.

  ‘If you want to be an art therapist, try that.’

  I didn’t, that was Sam’s idea.

  ‘But if you want to be a painter, fucking paint.’

  Alice’s swearing took me by surprise, but not as much as her words. Had I ever even tried? I wanted to paint. I wanted to fucking paint.

  ‘Alice.’ I took another sip. ‘I need to go back to CreateSpace.’

  I leaned against the wall where Sam had met me for countless lunches before. I gazed across the square and into the large windows of CreateSpace. I hardly looked inconspicuous in my funeral-formal attire. In just over a week the space leading to the gallery had witnessed my pansy-clad professional high and my rucksack-weighted personal low, and now this. I steadied myself. I knew I could go to any art shop. Oils, brushes, canvases, my shopping list was simple. But this wasn’t about speed, it was about something more symbolic. Maybe I was an artist after all. Fortune favours the brave. Tim, on the other finger-wagging hand, favoured the sassy. It could have been the wine or maybe it was because I had nowhere left to fall from where I was on rock bottom, but right now, I was feeling sassy. And, I wanted to paint.

  Alice looked across to me and smiled. ‘We can go somewhere else, you know?’

  I looked back over at CreateSpace, to the line of people eager to get in to the exhibition and the posters I had commissioned adorning the wall. Yes, I may have let Tim think I’d been starting a new job at Art Today but I’d never lied about working there – I’d worked there for three bloody years. And I’d worked tirelessly for him. I’d put my all into the exhibition and pulled off an opening night everyone was talking about. I’d got a lot wrong – sure. But when it came to this, I’d got some things right too.

  And he hadn’t even given me time to explain, wouldn’t even hear me out. I wouldn’t let him just dismiss me like that.

  ‘No, I want him to know I’m not scared of him.’ I was making a statement. ‘I’m so over being scared.’

  Alice nodded. Neither one of us mentioned Sam, the scariest thought of all. But Tim? Tim was a fifty-year-old man-child, too scared of Hannah Sommers to stand up to her or to stand up for me. Too self-centred to hear me out for even a moment, after all I’d done. The receptionists looked up as I walked in. It was like they’d seen a ghost. Maybe in the art world I was one. The ghost of promising staff members past. I looked past them to Tuesday’s Slumber, at the possibility of what I could do. Turning on my heel, I strutted in the opposite direction to the exhibition I had worked so hard to build and yet was now unable to enjoy. I walked purposely into the art shop and grabbed what I needed. No point in loitering around; the receptionists would tell Tim I was here, ballsy and unafraid. I handed over the dollars, which in just a couple of short months had become more familiar to me than pounds, and headed out of the shop, towards the glass entrance doors.

  ‘Jessica?’ My heart jolted as I heard Tim’s voice behind me. I turned, and saw him standing there in a metallic silver jumpsuit. He had once told me his outfits got more outrageous with every good review. This latest monstrosity was clearly a good sign. That, and the fact that I had read c
ountless articles and features praising Leo Todd and the latest curator to fill CreateSpace.

  ‘Tim,’ I said in return, one canvas under each arm and two bags of equipment clutched in each hand; they were heavy, but I wouldn’t show it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, pushing his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose. I looked down to the bags. Wasn’t it obvious? ‘Are you here to see the exhibition? Are you here for your post?’ He looked to the corners of the room nervously as if Atwood and Sommers had bugged the place. ‘You know you can’t—’

  ‘I was just buying some stuff,’ I said, but the relief in Tim’s face as he realised I wasn’t about to threaten his career sent my red wine-induced sass into overdrive. He’d done little to protect mine. ‘Actually, I’m not here to see the exhibition,’ I continued with increasing pace. ‘And do you know why? Because I helped make it happen. I know every inch of it. Probably better than you.’ I sounded like a schoolgirl. But in for a penny… ‘Tuesday’s Slumber – the one the press called “a bold statement” – wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for me.’ In the absence of free hands I gestured towards it with my chin, probably looking like I’d offered him a Glasgow kiss. ‘The palette-led positioning, which Vogue Australia called “a triumphantly innovative expression of taste”, wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for me. And do you know what? The press – they wouldn’t have been here without me either. So yes, I screwed up. I lied to my ex-boyfriend because I was so bloody ashamed of being adrift, I lied to you about having a job with Sommers. But I never lied to you about my abilities, about who I am. And I’m not ashamed of this.’ My chin gestured to the poster on the wall, mirroring the ones outside. If only he’d found me in the shop and not now, hands full, looking like I’d probably robbed the place. ‘I’m proud of the work I’ve done for you, and the least you can do is acknowledge it. If you’d have listened, if you’d have let me say sorry… But hey, you win some, you lose some… and… and you’ve lost me.’

  My teenage tantrum complete, I turned on my heel and strutted out as best I could laden down with canvases. I didn’t need to turn back to know Tim would be nailed to the spot, face shocked and his hip popped, but I didn’t look back. I wouldn’t look back from now on.

  I lifted my shades, only to be blinded by the light, before putting them back on again. My gaze darted from my palette of paints, resting on the paved steps beside me, to the bright blank canvas tilted towards my body, resting on my knees. Every inch of me had wanted to paint just an hour ago, to reclaim the magic I had felt in that church or the magic I had felt the first time I had held a brush in my hands. But now I was here, alone. Just me, faced with a canvas of flawless nothingness and the sole power to screw it up.

  I looked across Coogee Beach. There was a man draping his arm around a woman and children playing in the sand. I could paint them, I guess. But I didn’t know what he was thinking, or what she was feeling, or what kind of day those children had enjoyed. I couldn’t paint their stories. I only had my own. I looked again from the canvas to the horizon. Deep blue sea, grey-blue sky, damp golden sand. It was the kind of three-stroke setting that a photo could never capture and a painting could only hope to glimpse. In an instant, my mind went from CreateSpace to the large expanses of block colours and weighty textures, to the way Sam had looked at me as he had tried to make sense of someone else’s emotion, encapsulated in a frame. It ran to Alice’s apartment, to the way her happy-go-lucky landscape had jarred against my mood. That was someone else’s Coogee. Too perfect, too precious – it said nothing of the raw, untamed waves, or the loneliness you could feel when surrounded by people, or the joy you could feel when diving into something new.

  I pressed my brush into the paint and started to mix, searching for sand. I looked at the canvas, isolated by its perfection, not wanting to screw it up. Without the music or spotlights or Alice by my side, I felt exposed. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a passer-by hovering, waiting for me to make my move. I splashed colour onto the canvas, thick and dark. It didn’t need to be perfect. I laid on another stoke. I just needed to feel it. Looking, brushing, I felt it; I felt every mistake I’d made all over again, and I felt release: the freedom to make mistakes, to learn from them. The freedom to forgive myself, to make wrong turns, to embrace where they were leading me. I felt the cold wet track of a tear falling down my cheek and the sense of finding something I thought I’d lost but was within me all along.

  Part III

  Chapter 37

  30 September 2020 – Sydney, Australia

  I stood back and watched him press the shutter.

  ‘That’s the last one.’ Andrew turned towards me and smiled.

  ‘It really is a lovely collection, Jess,’ Mark added.

  Collection. Lovely. I clung to the words, letting them warm me, letting them be mine. It had been over two weeks since I had first picked up a paintbrush again and now I stood looking at eight canvases that I had painted with scenes of my Sydney, resting against the exposed brick walls of Alice’s apartment. Not just curated by me, but built, brush by brush, stroke by stoke. It was what an eighteen-year-old me would have dreamed of but never been able to achieve. I looked at the one closest to me, currently unnamed and yet feeling so familiar: a square canvas opening a window to Bondi. Caught between abstraction and realism, the thick layers of impasto became white foam on the cusp of the waves, built up slowly with greys and blues and whites and greens. They clashed against the sand, softer, more sweeping, a darker shade from the bottom right corner, casting a shadow across the speckled ground that hinted of human silhouettes, two, or maybe three.

  It turned out Sam was right; painting didn’t pay. But the barista shifts I had finally managed to get did and at least Alice and I were drinking coffee for free now. She seemed to still like drinking them together despite us now being de facto flatmates – her spare room beginning to feel more and more my own with each passing day. And maybe one day my paintings might earn me something. Maybe one day. I thought of Sam and Jamie and my heart sank. They’d be getting married any day now. I’d heard from Alice that plans were hurtling forward, that Sam was stronger than ever, stronger without me. After seeing them at church together, I’d given up trying to call. At least I now knew I hadn’t ruined everything, even if I had ruined my friendship with Sam. I’d just have to make my peace with that.

  Mark grinned and shook his head, saying again, ‘It really is a lovely collection.’ At least the paintings paid in compliments. I looked at the canvases scattered around Alice’s living room again and glowed. Each one displayed a sprawling landscape, but every one of them was different, all little bits of me. I had created something I loved. No one had paid me to do it, no one had asked me to do it. And yet, glancing at the faces of three people fast becoming genuine friends, I knew they weren’t worthless.

  ‘So what’s next?’ Alice looked to me, her excitement overflowing.

  ‘I have to go to work,’ I replied, making for Alice’s spare room.

  ‘I meant with the paintings.’ Alice walked over to her favourite, a beachscape from the Coogee Bay steps. It was from the perspective of a figure sitting on the very steps I had waited on for Sam when Joshua had shown up instead. The strokes of golden yellow built up to the vibrant blue of water, dashes of thick white caught on the waves and hints of browns and pinks suggested people immersed within them. It was frenzied, adventurous, hopeful.

  ‘That’s the last of the photos online!’ Andrew exclaimed over the top of his laptop screen. ‘All you need to do is press send.’ Andrew turned the laptop around to face me. The screen displayed the press release I’d spent hours working on the night before. When Alice had first suggested I tell art editors about my work I had laughed out loud. Who would want to know? Would Hannah Sommers or Tim try and sabotage me before they could even contact me, like damp fingers snuffing out a flame? But after days of coaxing I had finally surrendered. I still had the press list from the exhibition and I was, after all,
now on a first-name basis with the art editor at Vogue Australia.

  And yet, now I was only a click away from sending it, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Who was I trying to fool? I wasn’t good enough. Thoughts of Sam, Jamie, CreateSpace and Tim ran through my mind.

  ‘Press it,’ Alice demanded, reading my expression.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, before Alice leaned over me and pressed the send button, purposeful and defiant. My stomach sank but my heart leapt. Just like the lies I had spun when I had first arrived at Sam’s, there was no undoing this now. Only this time, these paintings felt like the most truthful thing I’d done in months.

  ‘I can.’ She smiled. ‘Now go get ready for your shift, you slacker.’ She gave me a playful push towards the door. ‘You never know, it could be your last.’

  Chapter 38

  I greeted the tanned regulars who sat sipping lattes outside, one couple’s legs twisting around one another like the legs of the delicate iron tables that lined the front of the store. The Coffee Shop. The coffee-shop-cum-bar Alice and I had been drinking at when I’d first got the idea for my collection. Turned out the second I stopped trying to find a job, one found me. There had to be a lesson in that, but I was too late for my shift to find it right now.